Today’s hike is another BAS meet up. We are hiking Page Meadows Loop just outside of Tahoe city. We have eight hikers today.
We’ve just entered a meadow and are treated with a large grove of beautiful Aspen trees. As the wind blows through their leaves they shimmer giving them the name quaking aspens.
The Aspen leaves have a flat stem. That flat stem is what causes the shimmering as the wind blows across it.
While we were admiring the Aspen trees, we met a local hiker who told us about a pizza oven nearby. In times past sheep were brought to this area for grazing. The sheep hoarders built a round top bread oven that is the same design as historic pizza ovens.
As we leave the meadow, there are a number of a very small streams that have rudimentary bridges across them to keep our feet dry and protect the environment.
Looking back at one of the water crossing bridges framed by aspen trees in the background, provides a nice backdrop.
As we enter another area of a pine trees, I come across a few pieces of a fungi growing on a tree. They are part of the shell fungi family.
Thimble Berry plants have a broad leaf and grow low to the ground. They also have turned a beautiful yellow shade for fall.
We found a nice spot with multiple logs on both sides of the trail. Some in the sun some in the shade and decided this is a good spot.
We came across three more shelf, fungi growing on the opposite side of a tree from the vibrant, green moss also on the host.
As we come into the larger meadow, it is lined with beautiful colors of oranges, yellows and greens from the aspens and the pine trees.
I took a couple of panoramic pictures at a varying zoom levels that show the beauty. As usual they don’t do nearly the justice that the naked eye offers
As we get back into a wooded area, we approach another large groove of very mature, large aspens. The largest we’ve seen so far on the hike.
We reached the junction of trail where our loop joins the stem back to the car. This is where we had branched off by the bread/pizza oven shown earlier.
We arrived back at our cars after 7.3 miles of very beautiful scenery. It was a great group.
Today’s hiking video
